Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to PetSmart's Third Quarter 2012 Analyst Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference Ms. April Lenhard, Head of Investor Relations. Ma'am?

April Lenhard - IR: Good afternoon and welcome to PetSmart's conference call to announce our results for the third quarter of fiscal 2012. With me on the call today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bob Moran; President and Chief Operating Officer, David Lenhardt; as well as Chip Molloy, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Bob will kick off the call with an overview of our results and then Chip will take you through the financial review as well as our earnings guidance. David will review the operations of the business and finally we'll take your questions. Please keep in mind everything we cover during today's call, including the question-and-answer session is subject to the Safe Harbor statement for forward-looking information you'll find in today's news release.

Thanks and I'll now turn the call over to Bob.

Robert F. Moran - Chairman and CEO: Thanks, April, and good afternoon everyone. We are pleased to report another quarter of solid earnings growth. For the third quarter, earnings per share were $0.75, up 50% when compared to $0.50 for the same period last year. Comparable store sales or sales in stores opened at least a year, grew 6.5% and comp transactions which we use as a proxy for traffic, were up 2.3%.

Our performance in the third quarter was due to the strength across all three merchandising categories; consumables, hardgoods and live goods as well as across services. We are executing well and continue to define the pet specialty customer experience because we are much more than a store that just sells product.

As North America's leading pet specialty retailer, we provide a full range of services including professional grooming, training, boarding, day camp and full-service veterinary care all under one roof, and we are privileged to have the most passionate associates in the industry who engage with our pet parents to offer solutions.

We've also build a culture of innovation and differentiation that sets us apart from the competition. Through our PetSmart Charities the largest funder of animal welfare efforts in all of North America we are proud that nearly 1,100 homeless pets are saved each day in our stores. All these things define the PetSmart brand. It is strong and it resonates with our customers.

As a side note, we recently signed a product license agreement with Emart, a leading retailer in South Korea to sell a limited number proprietary branded hardgoods products in select pet stores in South Korea. We view this partnership as a low risk learning exercise to gain a better understanding of how our brand is received in emerging Asian markets without investing significant resources.

Transcript Call Date 11/14/2012

Operator: Alan Rifkin, Barclays.

Alan Rifkin - Barclays Capital: Could you maybe just provide a little bit more color on what you think the benefit from Sandy was both in Q3 and what you do think that could be in Q4?

Chip Molloy - EVP and CFO: It’s Chip. Q3, because it was coming up towards the end of the quarter, it really didn’t impact much at all because maybe a little bit of pre-buying on the consumables but it wasn’t material. Just the sheer fact that the number of stores that were closed in some of those areas just took so long to get back and some areas still haven’t gotten back, it is a big enough number that it changes our guidance a little bit but not very much. We’re not going to actually break it out. It’s still an estimate as we speak but it’s a little bit on the guidance.

Alan Rifkin - Barclays Capital: And one follow-up if I may. Obviously, the improvement in the expense ratio was a step-wise improvement over what we've seen that you guys in prior quarters despite the comp being strong in prior quarters as well as this quarter. Chip, could you just maybe shed a little bit more color as to what exactly you're seeing there and the sustainability in your opinion of this operating expense ratio leverage?

Chip Molloy - EVP and CFO: One; I would say, it's – I know this sounds a little bit like lame answer, Alan, but it's a little bit of everywhere. It was one of those quarters where virtually every cost center seem to come in slightly better than we thought it was going to come in, so I'll start there. The second thing is that we have been investing fairly heavily in marketing over multiple quarters and we're now coming up, except for the fourth quarter of this year or coming through a cycle where we started this a couple years ago, probably around the third quarter a couple of years ago, so it's not as big of an investment, so those others areas where we're saving and aren't getting diluted by huge increase in marketing spend. However, in the fourth quarter, as was mentioned on the call, it's one of those quarters where we really haven't made as much investment as we would have liked to historically, and so this quarter we're expecting a big advertising quarter going forward.

Alan Rifkin - Barclays Capital: One last question if I may, just playing devil's advocate, if you pull out the benefit from the extra week which remains at $0.16, that would give you a 13 versus 13-week EPS number of $1 to $1.04 which in terms of growth rates would imply a material slowdown versus what you folks have been putting up quarter-in quarter-out. What could you possibly attribute that to, Chip?

Chip Molloy - EVP and CFO: Well, I don't think it has been unanticipated so we always thought that back half of the year, especially the fourth quarter would it be as big as the first parts of the year; one is top line growth might not be quite as high primarily as you start to see continued deceleration of inflation. That's number one. And then the biggest thing is that we have some increase in our professional fees to some of our pro-fees and the timing of our projects hitting the fourth quarter and then the biggest piece is advertising. So, we are investing – we are growing advertising almost 50% in the fourth quarter year-over-year. We have had a great with a great momentum. We think it is worthwhile to continue to invest there and we want to keep that momentum going into the first part of next year and we think that level of advertising is going to keep the momentum going into the first part of next year.